Usage

Roles and Directives

:cite:

Create a citation to a bibliographic entry. For example:

See :cite:`1987:nelson` for an introduction to non-standard analysis.

which would be equivalent to the following LaTeX code:

See \cite{1987:nelson} for an introduction to non-standard analysis.
.. bibliography:: refs.bib [...]

Create bibliography for all cited references. The all flag forces all references to be included (equivalent to \nocite{*} in LaTeX). The notcited flag causes all references that were not cited to be included. The cited flag is recognized as well but is entirely optional. For example:

.. rubric:: References

.. bibliography:: refs.bib
   :cited:

which would be roughly equivalent to the following LaTeX code:

\begin{thebibliography}{1}
  \bibitem{1987:nelson}
  Edward~Nelson
  \newblock {\em Radically Elementary Probability Theory}.
  \newblock Princeton University Press, 1987.
\end{thebibliography}

Note that, unlike LaTeX, the bibliography directive does not generate a default section title.

Warning

Sphinx may not be able to create an entry for cite keys when your bibliography directive resides in a different document; see Unresolved Citations Across Documents for more information and workarounds.

You can also pick a bibliography style, using the style option. This is not yet quite as useful, as only plain and unsrt are supported. The plain style is the default.

.. bibliography:: refs.bib
   :style: unsrt

All citations have numbered labels, as in the plain LaTeX bibliography style, regardless of the style chosen. This limitation might be lifted in a future version.

If you have multiple bibliographies, and experience duplicate labels, use the labelprefix option.

.. rubric:: References

.. bibliography:: refs.bib
   :cited:
   :labelprefix: A

.. rubric:: Further reading

.. bibliography:: refs.bib
   :notcited:
   :labelprefix: B

Warning

Sphinx will attempt to resolve references to the bibliography across all documents, so you must take care that no citation key is included more than once.

You can also set the encoding of the bibliography files, using the encoding option.

.. bibliography:: refs.bib
   :encoding: latex+latin

Note that, usually, you want to prepend your encoding with latex+, in order to convert LaTeX control characters to unicode characters (for instance, to convert \'e into é). The latex codec is invoked by default, for your convenience. Be sure to write \% when you intend to format a percent sign.

You can also change the type of list used for rendering the bibliography. By default, a paragraph of standard citations is generated. However, instead, you can also generate a bullet list, or an enumerated list.

.. bibliography:: refs1.bib
   :list: bullet
   :all:

.. bibliography:: refs2.bib
   :list: enumerated
   :all:

Note that citations to these types of bibliography lists will not be resolved.

For enumerated lists, you can also specify the type (default is arabic), and the start of the sequence (default is 1).

.. bibliography:: refs2.bib
   :list: enumerated
   :enumtype: upperroman
   :start: 3
   :all:

The enumtype can be any of arabic (1, 2, 3, ...), loweralpha (a, b, c, ...), upperalpha (A, B, C, ...), lowerroman (i, ii, iii, ...), or upperroman (I, II, III, ...).

The start can be any positive integer (1, 2, 3, ...) or continue if you wish the enumeration to continue from the last bibliography directive. This is helpful if you split up your bibliography but still want to enumerate the entries continuously.

Known Issues and Workarounds

Tinkerer

To use the bibtex extension with Tinkerer, be sure to specify the bibtex extension first in your conf.py file:

extensions = ['sphinxcontrib.bibtex', 'tinkerer.ext.blog', 'tinkerer.ext.disqus']

Encoding: Percent Signs

When using the LaTeX codec (which is by default), be sure to write \% for percent signs at all times (unless your file contains a genuine comment), otherwise the bibtex lexer will ignore the remainder of the line.

If you don’t want any LaTeX symbols to be reinterpreted as unicode, use the option :encoding: utf (without the latex+ prefix).

Unresolved Citations Across Documents

If you cite something that has its bibliography in another document, then, at the moment, the extension may, or may not, realise that it has to add this citation. There are a few ways to work around this problem:

  • Use the option :all: in the bibliography directive (which will simply cause all entries to be included).
  • Ensure that the bibliography directive is processed after all cites. Sphinx appears to process files in an alphabetical manner. For instance, in case you have only one file containing a bibliography directive, simply name that file zreferences.rst.

Hopefully, this limitation can be lifted in a future release.

KeyError When Using :style: plain

When using the plain style, or any style that sorts entries, pybtex may raise KeyError: 'author' for entries that have no author. A patch has been submitted upstream:

https://code.launchpad.net/~matthias-troffaes/pybtex/sorting-bugfix

Duplicate Labels When Using :style: plain

With :style: plain, label are numerical, restarting at [1] for each bibliography directive. Consequently, when inserting multiple bibliography directives with :style: plain, you are bound to get duplicate labels for entries. There are a few ways to work around this problem:

  • Use a single bibliography directive for all your references.

  • Use the labelprefix option, as documented above.

  • Use a style that has non-numerical labelling. Unfortunately, pybtex does not yet support such styles. A patch for non-numerical styles, such as :style: alpha, has been submitted upstream:

    https://code.launchpad.net/~matthias-troffaes/pybtex/label-alpha

    When this becomes part of pybtex, the plan is to change the default citation style to :style: alpha, as this style is also more in line with how citations are usually labelled in Sphinx.